Vestas announces world's largest off-shore wind turbine

European turbine manufacturer Vestas has announced the V164: the world's largest turbine, specifically
designed to withstand the the world's roughest seas.

The monster construction has a colossal wingspan of 164 metres,
meaning you could fit nine double-decker buses on each of its three
blades, if you really wanted to. Those bumper blades will allow the
turbine to generate 7 MW of power, which is enough to power around
5,000 typical European households.

The V164 has been designed with the punishing North Sea
winds and waves in mind.Anders Søe-Jensen, the
President of Vestas Off-shore, said, "we expect the major part of
offshore wind development to happen in the Northern part of
Europe, where the conditions at sea are particularly
rough."

During the turbine's creation, Vestas had two separate
research and development teams working in parallel, to see which
style of drive-train would be most efficient and reliable in those
choppy North Sea conditions. One R&D track was
experimenting with a direct drive solution, while the other
tinkered with gears.

As it turned out, a medium-speed drive-train solution was
best. "Off-shore wind customers do not want new and untested solutions. They
want reliability and business case certainty -- and that is what
the V164-7.0 MW gives them," said Finn Strøm Madsen, Vestas'
R&D President.

The current world record holder for largest wind turbine is
the on-shore Enercon
E-126. This towering 98 metre windmill has a rotor diameter of
126 metres: just 38 metres shorter than Vestas' new
monster.

It was originally designed to generate 6 MW, but Enercon
engineers overclocked it to 7 MW. An even further increase in
capacity, to 7.5 MW, is planned. 24 of those turbines currently
exist, with 13 in Germany and 11 in Belgium.

Vestas plans to build a prototype of its new blade in 2012,
with the aim of starting production sometime in 2015. While the
V164 is specifically tailored to North Europe, the firm is prepared to take it around the globe
if market demand is high.